“Reasons to be cheerful”

When you believe in love, when you have experienced love, when you trust that love never fails, you always have a reason to celebrate. No matter what is going on. Many of you will know that my mother had a hip replacement operation six weeks ago. It was a long and tortuous journey from diagnosis to surgery with many barriers to overcome. However, since waking up from the operation she has not had one scintilla of pain. It’s like a miracle.

She does, however, still experience significant pain from the results of a lifetime’s suffering with rheumatoid arthritis. Despite all this, can she rejoice? Oh yes! My mother’s middle name is “Joy”. You can see in the photograph above that she is living up to her name. It’s her birthday. Penny and I went to celebrate with my mother and father this week. The hip pain is gone. Other pain remains. But we celebrate life, the abundance of glory contained within God’s creation, and family. Oh yes, the rather nice lunch put together by my wife did also help!

I hope and pray that you have many things to celebrate. Daily. Yes, daily. You can celebrate every day. Part of my daily prayer is to thank God for the new day. It wasn’t promised, I could not earn it, I certainly don’t deserve it. But it has been gifted to me. Therefore at the beginning of every day, I celebrate. As the King James version puts it:

“This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

(Psalm 118:24 KJV)

I offer my recordings this week in a spirit of celebration. I hope that you can celebrate the fact that Jesus never said “goodbye”. I pray you can celebrate the opportunity to preach even when you don’t know what to preach about. And, I pray that you can celebrate the challenge of needing the wisdom to know when to change the song service and when to leave it alone.

The podcast summary contains a reminder of what’s been posted on my site this week. I.e. the usual TTT, SS & QTC. To watch/listen to any posts, just head over the the website.

Prayer request

As mentioned elsewhere I had a very helpful meeting with members of the Thames Valley church discussing adjustments to my future role. I’m very excited about the opportunities for a greater emphasis on teaching, training and coaching. Please pray for me that I understand the correct priorities, and am willing to step outside my comfort zone. If you have any recommendations on materials which may help me to coach better, please pass them my way.

Thank you for reading this far, and encouraging me in my endeavours to support our times of quiet with God, our corporate worship experiences, and the effectiveness of our preaching and teaching.

If you know anyone who might enjoy these materials, please send them a link to my website and encourage them to sign up for this newsletter.

God bless, Malcolm